Winter's Reckoning by Adele Holmes, M. D.

Winter's Reckoning by Adele Holmes, M.D.

256 pages

Published August 2022 by She Write Press

Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher, in exchange for an honest review, through TLC Book Tours

Publisher's Summary: 

Forty-six-year-old Madeline Fairbanks has no use for ideas like "separation of the races" or "men as the superior sex." There are many in her dying Southern Appalachian town who are upset by her socially progressive views, but for years--partly due to her late husband's still-powerful influence, and partly due to her skill as a healer in a remote town with no doctor of its own--folks have been willing to turn a blind eye to her "transgressions." Even Maddie's decision to take on a Black apprentice, Ren Morgan, goes largely unchallenged by her white neighbors, though it's certainly grumbled about. But when a charismatic and power-hungry new reverend blows into town in 1917 and begins to preach about the importance of racial segregation, the long-idle local KKK chapter fires back into action--and places Maddie and her friends in Jamesville's Black community squarely in their sights. Maddie had better stop intermingling with Black folks, discontinue her herbalistic "witchcraft," and leave town immediately, they threaten, or they'll lynch Ren's father, Daniel. Faced with this decision, Maddie is terrified . . . and torn. Will she bow to their demands and walk away--or will she fight to keep the home she's built in Jamestown and protect the future of the people she loves, both Black and white?

My Thoughts: 

Remember Sunday when I was lamenting that I had missed my review date for this book? So I raced through it only to discover today that it was meant to be an Instagram post that I missed. Seriously the easiest thing to do and I missed it. Which all goes to tell you something about my state of mind. And also something about why my review is what it is. 

The notes about Adele Holmes call this book Southern gothic. According to Wikipedia, Southern Gothic includes "storytelling of deeply flawed, disturbing or eccentric characters who may be involved in hoodoo, decayed or derelict settings, grotesque situations, and other sinister events relating to or stemming from poverty, alienation, crime, or violence." Let's see how this book fits that: 

    Deeply flawed character?                                     Check

    Eccentric character?                                             Check and check

    Characters who may be involved in hoodoo?      This one does talk about hoodoo, so check

    Decayed settings?                                                 A town that's dying, so, again, check

    Events stemming from poverty?                          Check

    Events stemming from violence?                         Check 

    Events stemming from alienation?                       Check

    Sinister events?                                                    Check and check

I'd say that publisher bit is spot on, according to the Wikipedia definition. But this is also the story of strong women, so often lacking in Southern Gothic fiction. 

Maddie comes from a long line of healers; but, after not being able to save her only son, Maddie doubts she has inherited the full gifts of her ancestors. Still, she believes, despite the ignorance of so many around her, that she is called to care for all of the people of her valley and to pass along her knowledge to her granddaughter, Hannah, and her friend, Ren. And she believes that those people have come to accept her, after more than 20 years in the valley. That is until Carl Howard, the new "reverend" finds that the best way to get people (ok, the men) to follow him is to play to their deepest fears, which turn out to be "uppity" women and black people. That puts Maddie and Ren in danger, although neither of them sees Carl for exactly what he is until their friendship is torn apart. 

This book was a slow build for me, taking nearly 100 pages to really begin to draw me into it. After that, it  was nonstop action with a blizzard, a hermit, a killing, blackmail, and a murder plot. This one might have worked a little better with less going on. But most of the time while I was reading it, I couldn't help but think how much my mom would have enjoyed this book, with her ability to focus on the good and overlook the shortcomings of historical fiction that features strong female characters. The Mom Stamp of Approval is always a good thing!

 

Where Wild Peaches Grow by Cade Bentley

Where Wild Peaches Grow by Cade Bentley

300 pages

Published August 2022 by Lake Union Publishing

Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher, through TLC Book Tours, in exchange for an honest review

Publisher's Summary:

Nona “Peaches” Davenport, abandoned by the man she loved and betrayed by family, left her Natchez, Mississippi, home fifteen years ago and never looked back. She’s forged a promising future in Chicago as a professor of African American Studies. Nona even finds her once-closed heart persuaded by a new love. But that’s all shaken when her father’s death forces her to return to everything she’s tried to forget.

Julia Curtis hasn’t forgiven her sister for deserting the family. Just like their mother, Nona walked away from Julia when she needed her most. And Julia doesn’t feel guilty for turning to Nona’s old flame, Marcus, for comfort. He helped Julia build a new life. She has a child, a career, and a determination to move on from old family wounds.

Upon Nona’s return to Natchez, a cautious reunion unfolds, and everything Nona and Julia thought they knew–about themselves, each other, and those they loved–will be tested. Unpacking the truth about why Nona left may finally heal their frayed bond–or tear it apart again, forever.

My Thoughts:

In 1865, tens of thousands of newly self-emancipated enslaved persons fled, trying to get behind Union lines, presumably to be safe from re-enslavement. The Union was not prepared for the numbers of people they were suddenly charged with the care of and, more than likely, very little interest in caring for them. Exactly what happened to those people depends on who is telling the story; revisionist Confederate history would have us believe that the Union army intentionally allowed women and children to starver or die of smallpox, leaving 20,000 of 100,000 dead in a place called Devil's Punchbowl in Natchez, Mississippi. In the years following this, wild peach trees grew in the area but many will not eat the peaches, given how the ground was fertilized. 

Ms. Bentley sets her book in Natchez, with Julia's and Nona's Mamaw living across the street from the Devil's Punchbowl. She takes two pieces from the history of that location: the peaches play a big role in the story (they indirectly cause the death of the Davenport sisters' father) and the idea of revisionist storytelling. In our introduction to Nona, she is teaching her students that "Storytelling is how history was created. But our stories have often been supplanted with deliberate misinformation. Revisionism. Done to tell a different story." She is speaking of how the American South spent decades revising history. 

Nona's (and Julia's) own history is also filled with stories that have been revised to tell a different story, through lies, misinformation and secrets kept. The sisters spend decades living their lives apart because of a misunderstanding and these lies (the lies the sisters have been told, the lies the sisters have told otheers, and the lies they have told themselves) and secrets. But when Nona returns home for their father's funeral, the lies come to light and the secrets are revealed. 

Julia is the sister who was left behind. She is the sister who was left to care for a father that, I must say, was not the kind of man a daughter might feel compelled to spend any time caring for - but then Julia wasn't fully aware of what had transpired when she was younger. Readers are, through peeks into the past, and I couldn't help but feel that the girls were better off without him. 

Bentley tells the girls stories in both the past and present, and from multiple points of view, which allows readers to "hear" the sisters perspective and to know the way their lives were perceived by others. It made for a slow start as readers are slowly introduced to the characters, while also stepping back in time. That's offset by an ending that I only saw coming because there were so few pages in the book left; it felt a bit abrupt but both wrapped things up while leaving some character's stories open-ended. 

I found Bentley's descriptions, particularly those of Natchez and the area, very lovely. There were some unanswered questions, which I wasn't sure was intentional or not. If you're a fan of messy, complicated stories, you'll likely enjoy this book. It's a book that's somewhat out of my usual lane but I enjoyed it, being one of those fans of messy family stories. 

Thanks to the ladies of TLC Book Tours for including me on this tour. 

About Cade Bentley 

Cade Bentley is a novelist and editor who is also published as Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author Abby L. Vandiver, as well as Abby Colette. When she isn’t writing, Cade enjoys spending time with her grandchildren. She resides in South Euclid, Ohio. For more information visit www.authorabby.com.

Where The Crawdads Sing by Della Owens

Where The Crawdads Sing by Della Owens

Published August 2018 by Penguin Publishing Group

Source: good question - did I buy it or did my mom loan me her copy?

Publisher's Summary:

For years, rumors of the "Marsh Girl" have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life—until the unthinkable happens. 

Where the Crawdads Sing is at once an exquisite ode to the natural world, a heartbreaking coming-of-age story, and a surprising tale of possible murder. Owens reminds us that we are forever shaped by the children we once were, and that we are all subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.

My Thoughts:

My book club, like so many others, wanted to read this book so I added it to our list for 2020 and requested the book club bag from the library at the beginning of October of 2019. When Covid shut down the library, we were were still several months from getting the bag. We finally gave up in November and we all had to find our own copies. Which is all a long way to say that I've inadvertently put off reading this book until the giant buzz around it died down. That's usually a good thing for me and this book was no exception. 

Owens writes about the North Carolina coastal area beautifully and I would really enjoy reading a nonfiction book by her about the area. The setting may well be the most interesting character in this book.

“Marsh is not swamp. Marsh is a space of light, where grass grows in water, and water flows into the sky. Slow-moving creeks wander, carrying the orb of the sun with them to the sea, and long-legged birds lift with unexpected grace—as though not built to fly—against the roar of a thousand snow geese. Then within the marsh, here and there, true swamp crawls into low-lying bogs, hidden in clammy forests. Swamp water is still and dark, having swallowed the light in its muddy throat. Even night crawlers are diurnal in this lair. There are sounds, of course, but compared to the marsh, the swamp is quiet because decomposition is cellular work. Life decays and reeks and returns to the rotted duff; a poignant wallow of death begetting life.”

Not only does Owens do a lovely job of showing us this part of the country she clearly loves, but she uses her knowledge of it to give us clues to what will happen in the book. If, by some chance, you have not already read this book, I certainly recommend that you pay attention to these parts of the book, not just because they are well written, but because if you don't, later you will absolutely wonder what you missed. 

I picked up this book in print and discovered that holding a book was just what I needed after so many audio and e-books. It certainly enhanced my experience of the book. I will admit that, because I started the book too close to my book club meeting, I will admit that I did skip almost all of the poetry Owens included in it (which, as it turned out, also held clues). 

As for the story, I have mixed feelings. It required a tremendous amount of suspension of disbelief and I wasn't able to quite muster up as much of that as it would have required to love the book. There was some dialogue that felt stiff to me and many of the characters felt like stereotypes to me. Some were too good to be true, some had almost no redeeming characteristics. It also brought to mind other books I've read that took place in the same or similar setting (such as those by Pat Conroy, Sarah Addison Allen, and Jesmyn Ward's Salvage The Bones); periodically I had the feeling I'd read this book before. 

So, in the end, I didn't love it. But then I wasn't expecting to love it. Despite those shortcomings, I did still enjoy this book. Despite almost unceasing sadness, it was a good break for me from all of the heavy nonfiction reading I've been doing and I found myself racing through it. 

In The Valley by Ron Rash

In The Valley by Ron Rash

Published August 2020 by Doubleday

Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review

Publisher's Summary:

Ron Rash has long been a revered presence in the landscape of American letters. A virtuosic novelist, poet, and story writer, he evokes the beauty and brutality of the land, the relentless tension between past and present, and the unquenchable human desire to be a little bit better than circumstances would seem to allow (to paraphrase Faulkner). 

In these ten stories, Rash spins a haunting allegory of the times we live in—rampant capitalism, the severing of ties to the natural world in the relentless hunt for profit, the destruction of body and soul with pills meant to mute our pain—and yet within this world he illuminates acts of extraordinary decency and heroism. Two of the stories have already been singled out for accolades: "Baptism" was chosen by Roxane Gay for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories 2018, and "Neighbors" was selected by Jonathan Lethem for The Best American Mystery Stories 2019. And in revisiting Serena Pemberton, Rash updates his bestselling parable of greed run amok as his deliciously vindictive heroine returns to the North Carolina wilderness she left scarred and desecrated to make one final effort to kill the child that threatens all she has accomplished. 

My Thoughts:

I've been a fan of Ron Rash's for more than ten years, since I read Serena (my review). I'm always eager to read more of his work; when I saw this collection included a novella based on Serena, I knew I wanted to read it right away. I thought I might race through the short stories to get to the novella but two things stopped me: I began to worry that the novella might not live up to my memories of the book on which it was based and the short stories are too good to be rushed. 

Richard Price, who knows brutal writing, calls Ron Rash a "gorgeous brutal writer." In everything Rash writes, there is a brutality and these stories are no exception: a group of Confederate soldiers threaten to burn down the barn and take everything of value from a young mother and her children, an ex-con tries to airdrop toys to the children he loves but has been banned from seeing, a kidnapped young woman is turned into a drug addict, and an abusive ex-husband demands to be baptized so he can marry a his former wife's young sister. But Rash's darkness is never entirely without heart and hope, saving his work from complete despair. Last Bridge Burned helps us see how small acts of kindness can make all the difference; The Belt showed us the ultimate gift of love. And, my God, his writing is as incredible as it was when I first picked up his work. From small slices of a life to epic tales, Rash gives readers vivid imagery and memorable, relatable characters. 

And the novella? It gave me everything I wanted - Serena Pemberton at her Lady Macbeth best, the battle between human lives and profits, astonishing violence, and tenderness. Perhaps, best of all, Rash left me with the hope that we may not yet have seen the end of Serena. 

There aren't a lot of reviews of this collection out there so you're going to have to trust me on this one. If you can handle the darkness and violence, and are a fan of short stories, I cannot recommend this collection enough, 

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Published 1960 by J. B. Lippincott & Co.
Source: checked out from my local library

Summary:
A gripping, heart-wrenching, and wholly remarkable tale of coming-of-age in a South poisoned by virulent prejudice, it views a world of great beauty and savage inequities through the eyes of a young girl, as her father—a crusading local lawyer—risks everything to defend a black man unjustly accused of a terrible crime.

My Thoughts:
The first time I read this book was about eight years ago as part of my failed effort to read 50 classics in five years. I was concerned then that I wasn’t the target audience, that I had missed my chance to love this book as so many do. I was wrong. It’s one of the few books I keep after reading with the idea that I may one day reread them. I rarely do. I have a fear that upon reread many of them will not live up to my memory of them, that much of their appeal is in the initial impression. To Kill A Mockingbird (TKAM) would likely have suffered the same fate were it not for my book club.

Every year we read one classic and one nonfiction book. This year I decided to have us read TKAM for our classic so that we would have a greater understanding of Lee going into our nonfiction selection, Casey Cep’s Furious Hours. I briefly considered not actually rereading the book myself, figuring it hadn’t been that long since I first read it and that some prep work for our discussion would bring me back up to speed. I’m so glad I didn’t do that.

This time because I was reading with the intent of being able to discuss the book, I read more intentionally. What are the themes of the book, what are the symbols Lee uses, how do the characters grow and change, does the story sound like it was written from a young girl’s perspective, is this book a good exploration of racism, and is this book a good choice for schools to use?

Let’s address that last question first. This is a beautifully written book that portrays a particular time and place and the people living there. But that alone is not cause to teach the book. TKAM abounds with racial slurs which are certainly time and place accurate, but the question’s been raised as to whether or not young black people should have to read that in the school books. As a white person of a heritage that’s never had to deal with ethnic slurs, I don’t know that I, or any of my peers, are the people who should be making that decision. A more recent concern raised is that, in this book, a young woman lies about being raped. Does this perpetuate the idea that women lie about rape and is that an area teachers will need to address if they are using this book? Because the young woman has falsely accused a black man, if we are going to teach this book, should we also be doing follow up teaching of real life cases like this? If we choose not to use this book to educate our children about racism, are we censoring the book or are we just making different, better choices?

Given all of that, is it even a good choice for adults? I’d like to think (although I know it’s not true but I like to live in a bubble sometimes so let’s just stay there for now, shall we?) that adults will understand that this is a book about racism written by a white woman and told from the perspective of a white person. The black people in the book have no agency; we don’t get to see how racism really affects them. But it’s a starting point, as one would hope it is a starting point for young Scout. Now we need take the next step and read books about racism told by people who actually experience it every day. Read The Hate U Give, The Underground Railroad, Men We Reaped, Between The World and Me, or anything by Langston Hughes or James Baldwin.

I’ll put away my soap box now because, as I said, I still love this book in no small part because of the other things Lee explores - moral education, good versus evil and the impact evil has on the innocent, the judicial system, and social inequality. I love her use of Gothic elements throughout the book and the symbolism of the mockingbird as innocence.

On reread, Lee’s writing still impresses; I’d almost forgotten just how good it is. Her descriptions of Maycomb, the South, and its people are magnificent.

“Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop . . . [s]omehow it was hotter then . . . bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men’s stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o’clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum. . . . There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County. But it was a time of vague optimism for some of the people: Maycomb County had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself.”

And can't you just imagine a young child saying this about their parent? I vividly remember being six-years-old and being aware that my mom, at 33, was older than the other kids' moms.

"Atticus was feeble; he was nearly fifty. When Jem and I asked him why he was so old, he said he got started late, which we felt reflected upon his ability and manliness. He was much older than the parents of our school contemporaries, and there was nothing Jem or I could say about him when our classmates said, "My father..."  

I encourage you to read To Kill A Mockingbird if you haven’t already, for its beautiful writing, for its portrayal of a small town and coming of age and the death of innocence. It is not without flaws, but if you go into it eyes wide open, I think you’ll understand what those are and still be able to appreciate what Lee has done.

The Accidentals by Minrose Gwin

The Accidentals by Minrose Gwin
Published August 2019 by HarperCollins Publishers
Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher, through TLC Book Tours, in exchange for an honest review

Publisher's Summary:
Following the death of their mother from a botched backwoods abortion, the McAlister daughters have to cope with the ripple effect of this tragedy as they come of age in 1950s Mississippi and then grow up to face their own impossible choices—an unforgettable, beautiful novel that is threaded throughout with the stories of mothers and daughters in pre-Roe versus Wade America.

Life heads down back alleys, takes sharp left turns. Then, one fine day it jumps the track and crashes.”

In the fall of 1957, Olivia McAlister is living in Opelika, Mississippi, caring for her two girls, June and Grace, and her husband, Holly. She dreams of living a much larger life—seeing the world and returning to her wartime job at a landing boat factory in New Orleans. As she watches over the birds in her yard, Olivia feels like an “accidental”—a migratory bird blown off course.

When Olivia becomes pregnant again, she makes a fateful decision, compelling Grace, June, and Holly to cope in different ways. While their father digs up the backyard to build a bomb shelter, desperate to protect his family, Olivia’s spinster sister tries to take them all under her wing. But the impact of Olivia’s decision reverberates throughout Grace’s and June’s lives. Grace, caught up in an unconventional love affair, becomes one of the “girls who went away” to have a baby in secret. June, guilt-ridden for her part in exposing Grace’s pregnancy, eventually makes an unhappy marriage. Meanwhile Ed Mae Johnson, an African-American care worker in a New Orleans orphanage, is drastically impacted by Grace’s choices.

As the years go by, their lives intersect in ways that reflect the unpredictable nature of bird flight that lands in accidental locations—and the consolations of imperfect return.

My Thoughts:
I've been reading a lot lately - books for review, library books that have become available and need to get read quickly. It's meant I'm not always reading the book that I would have chosen for the reading mood I'm in at that moment. Truthfully, I'm not even always sure what I'm in the mood to read. For example, I didn't know, when I picked up The Accidentals that I was in the mood for a beautifully written book about family that spans decades and explores the ripple effect of our choices. She vividly describes the birds, the land, the food and drink, the clothing - it's all part of a beautiful picture. More importantly, Gwin does a marvelous job of helping readers feel her characters anger, their guilt, and their pain.

In the time before Roe v. Wade, three unwanted pregnancies result in three different choices and three very different outcomes. Gwin doesn't make any judgments about her characters choices; she seems to want readers to understand that any choice is a tough choice when faced with an unwanted pregnancy. Olivia had to be willing to risk her life, Grace was forced to give up her daughter, and June felt forced into marriage - all choices they felt they had to make because of the morals and laws of that time.

Speaking of the morals and laws of the time, Gwin loads up her story with references that put readers squarely into the decades in which the book takes place. World War II, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the space race, the Challenger accident, Hurricane Katrina, and Barack Obama's first bid for the presidency help readers keep track of when the book is taking place; Gwin tends to skip forward in time, sometimes taking great leaps, and those references helped me keep track of the ages the sisters.

She also touches on a lot of subjects in the book: homosexuality, abortion, teen pregnancy, rape, adoption, racism, love, redemption, forgiveness, family, racism, "passing," mental illness, Alzheimer's, cancer, animal abuse, pedophilia, rights of felons to vote, and gender inequality. Sound like a lot? It is and, to be honest, Gwin might have been better served by cutting back on some of it. Occasionally it felt forced, like when Ed Mae can vote for the first time just as the first black man is running for president. Sometimes I wasn't sure it was Gwin's place to try to tell the story. I appreciated that she was trying to weave in a story about how unfair life was for blacks in the south in the second half of the last century; but I wasn't sure it was her story to tell.

One reviewer on Goodreads wrote "much like the birds - the "accidentals" that lose their way - so, too, does the story." I'm not sure I entirely agree with that, but the last quarter of the book feels like it is racing along to get to the finale. And it felt a little jarring that Gwin chose to let Ed Mae's story be the final chapter since the book was not her story. That being said, despite a need for some suspension of disbelief, I did like the way the story lines came together at the end of the book and that fact that Gwin left readers to come to their own conclusions about what might have come next.

Thanks to the ladies of TLC Book Tours for giving me the right book at the right time, a book about these "accidentals." For other opinions about this book, check out the full tour.

About Minrose Gwin

Minrose Gwin is the author of The Queen of Palmyra, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick and finalist for the John Gardner Fiction Book Award, and the memoir Wishing for Snow, cited by Booklist as “eloquent” and “lyrical”—“a real life story we all need to know.” She has written four scholarly books and coedited The Literature of the American South. She grew up in Tupelo, Mississippi, hearing stories of the Tupelo tornado of 1936. She lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Find out more about Minrose at her website. The book can be found at HarperCollins.

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
Read by Kelvin Harrison Jr., Chris Chalk, Rutina Wesley
Published Published September 2017 by Scribner
Source: purchased my print copy, checked out audiobook copy from my library

Publisher's Summary:
An intimate portrait of a family and an epic tale of hope and struggle, Sing, Unburied, Sing journeys through Mississippi’s past and present, examining the ugly truths at the heart of the American story and the power—and limitations—of family bonds. Jojo is thirteen years old and trying to understand what it means to be a man. He doesn’t lack in fathers to study, chief among them his Black grandfather, Pop. But there are other men who complicate his understanding: his absent White father, Michael, who is being released from prison; his absent White grandfather, Big Joseph, who won’t acknowledge his existence; and the memories of his dead uncle, Given, who died as a teenager.

His mother, Leonie, is an inconsistent presence in his and his toddler sister’s lives. She is an imperfect mother in constant conflict with herself and those around her. She is Black and her children’s father is White. She wants to be a better mother but can’t put her children above her own needs, especially her drug use. Simultaneously tormented and comforted by visions of her dead brother, which only come to her when she’s high, Leonie is embattled in ways that reflect the brutal reality of her circumstances.

When the children’s father is released from prison, Leonie packs her kids and a friend into her car and drives north to the heart of Mississippi and Parchman Farm, the State Penitentiary. At Parchman, there is another thirteen-year-old boy, the ghost of a dead inmate who carries all of the ugly history of the South with him in his wandering. He too has something to teach Jojo about fathers and sons, about legacies, about violence, about love.

My Thoughts:
My god, does Jesmyn Ward know how to rip your heart out of your chest. Ward makes readers see what it's like to live your life without hope of something better. The pain of these characters is so raw.  I needed there to be a bad guy, someone to blame for what was happening to these characters. But the bad guy here isn't a character in this book. But then, you already know that.

Parchman prisoners

It would be easy to put that label on Big Joseph. He really is a terrible person. But he's a product of his environment. It would be easy to call Leonie a terrible mother. She is. But she, too, is a product of her environment, a young woman who is desperately in love with a man whose parents will never accept her, a mother to two children she can't care more about than she cares about herself, and a sister who cannot stop grieving.

She is not alone in her grieving. Pop and Mam are grieving Given as well. They are all grieving Mam who has not yet succumbed to the cancer that is slowly killing her. But she is already gone from their lives in so many ways. And Pop is carrying a grief that none of them know about. That will come out in the stories Pop tells Jojo about his time in Parchman, the Mississippi State Penitentiary as a young man and the boy he tried to save.

I bought this book shortly after it came out but for some reason I never picked it up. When I saw I could get the audiobook, I grabbed it. I cannot recommend the audiobook highly enough. The readers are all excellent and add so much to the story. In fact, I'm not sure I would have felt the way I came to feel about Leonie were it not for Retina Wesley's reading.

Things got a little hard to follow toward the end of the book. The supernatural element that Ward had used so effectively to tell her tale really took over the book and, for me at least, things got a little muddled. It is to Ward's credit that I had been, until that point, perfectly fine with the supernatural element as it is something I often struggle with in a book. For those who don't have that problem, the ending may not bother you.

I don't know that I will be able to read this book again but I will probably keep it on my shelf. Just the sight of it while be a good reminder of this country's dark past and the way that past continues to echo through the generations.

The Last Ballad by Wiley Cash

The Last Ballad by Wiley Cash
Published October 2017 by HarperCollins Publishers
Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher and TLC Book Tours in exchange for an honest review

Publisher's Summary:
Twelve times a week, twenty-eight-year-old Ella May Wiggins makes the two-mile trek to and from her job on the night shift at American Mill No. 2 in Bessemer City, North Carolina. The insular community considers the mill’s owners—the newly arrived Goldberg brothers—white but not American and expects them to pay Ella May and other workers less because they toil alongside African Americans like Violet, Ella May’s best friend. While the dirty, hazardous job at the mill earns Ella May a paltry nine dollars for seventy-two hours of work each week, it’s the only opportunity she has. Her no-good husband, John, has run off again, and she must keep her four young children alive with whatever work she can find.

When the union leaflets begin circulating, Ella May has a taste of hope, a yearning for the better life the organizers promise. But the mill owners, backed by other nefarious forces, claim the union is nothing but a front for the Bolshevik menace sweeping across Europe. To maintain their control, the owners will use every means in their power, including bloodshed, to prevent workers from banding together. On the night of the county’s biggest rally, Ella May, weighing the costs of her choice, makes up her mind to join the movement—a decision that will have lasting consequences for her children, her friends, her town—indeed all that she loves.

Seventy-five years later, Ella May’s daughter Lilly, now an elderly woman, tells her nephew about his grandmother and the events that transformed their family. Illuminating the most painful corners of their history, she reveals, for the first time, the tragedy that befell Ella May after that fateful union meeting in 1929.

My Thoughts:
TLC Book Tours: Hey, do you want to read the new Wiley Cash book for a review?
Me: How is that even a question?

Ok, well, that's not exactly how the conversation went but it's pretty close. I've read and loved Cash's first two books (A Land More Kind Than Home and This Dark Road To Mercy). The only question when they asked me to review The Last Ballad was why had I not read it earlier. It's a question I'm still asking myself. Because Cash has done it again and I'm not sure why I haven't heard more about this book in the blogosphere.

Cash is a master at using multiple voices to tell his story. Here it is Ella May's story that is the through line of the book but Cash moves the story forward through the stories of those whose lives will intertwine with hers. There is not a character in this book whose story I was not interested in reading but I was always happy to get back to Ella, a woman who has finally tired of letting life carry her along, who is tired of watching her children go hungry and being used by every man she has met since her father died.

If you know your history, you know that violence was the norm which these strikes. So even if you've never read one of Cash's book (and know that things will get tense and there will be sadness), you'll know almost as soon as you start reading this book that something bad will happen before the book is done. It's the South, Ella's a mill worker, and she lives in a community of blacks. While Cash gives us brief periods of reprieve, there are so many levels of stress here that your apprehension never really lets up.

There's a tendency to think of the mill owners as the bad guys, the union organizers as the good guys, the ones who are coming in to help the workers to have a better life. But Cash wants readers to see how the unions were just as willing to use the workers to get what they wanted. The bad guys here are predominately mill management and law enforcement but there are more nuanced characters on both sides of the fight.

Poignant is a word that is probably used all too often in book reviews. Yet I don't know a better word to describe this book.

The Last Ballad is based on the true story of Ella May Wiggins and Cash shares her story in the Afterword. Do not look Wiggins up or peek at that Afterword. You want to this story to unfold in the way Cash wants to tell it. When you've finished, go read about Wiggins and the mill strikes; but not until you're finished.

Thanks to the ladies at TLC Book Tours for making sure I read this one. I've already passed it along to my parents and the day I gave it to them, my dad had already started it because he well remembered A Land More Kind Than Home. For other opinions on this book, check out the full tour.

Wiley Cash is the award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of A Land More Kind Than Home. A native of North Carolina, he has held residency positions at Yaddo and The MacDowell Colony and teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Southern New Hampshire University. He and his wife live in Wilmington, North Carolina. Find out more about Wiley at his website, and connect with him on Facebook and Twitter.

The Bone Tree by Greg Iles

The Bone Tree by Greg Iles
Published April 2015 by HarperCollins Publishers
Source: copy courtesy of the publisher and TLC Book Tours

Publisher's Summary:
Former prosecutor Penn Cage and his fiancée, reporter and publisher Caitlin Masters, have barely escaped with their lives after being attacked by wealthy businessman Brody Royal and his Double Eagles, a KKK sect with ties to some of Mississippi’s most powerful men. But the real danger has only begun as FBI Special Agent John Kaiser warns Penn that Brody wasn’t the true leader of the Double Eagles. The puppeteer who actually controls the terrorist group is a man far more fearsome: the chief of the state police’s Criminal Investigations Bureau, Forrest Knox.

The only way Penn can save his father, Dr. Tom Cage—who is fleeing a murder charge as well as corrupt cops bent on killing him—is either to make a devil’s bargain with Knox or destroy him. While Penn desperately pursues both options, Caitlin uncovers the real story behind a series of unsolved civil rights murders that may hold the key to the Double Eagles’ downfall. The trail leads her deep into the past, into the black backwaters of the Mississippi River, to a secret killing ground used by slave owners and the Klan for over two hundred years . . . a place of terrifying evil known only as “the bone tree.”

My Thoughts:
I actually have three copies of this book - the copy the publisher sent for this review, an ARC copy the publisher sent review last May, AND, because I needed to "read" this big boy in a hurry, an audiobook "copy."

Iles did not write The Bone Tree to be read right after finishing Natchez Burning. In fact, one could, conceivably, skip Natchez Burning altogether and jump straight into The Bone Tree because Iles spends a lot of print catching readers up in this book. Those who have read Natchez Burning probably don't need as much background as there is here; those who haven't should before they read this one. Because, why would you start a trilogy on the second book for one thing? And because you may be up to speed on who is who and, to some extent, what has happened. But you have no depth and you need the depth. You need to understand the loyalties, the deep seeded hatred, the intricacies of alliances.

Because in The Bone Tree, beyond bringing readers up to speed Iles doesn't add a lot of deep to the story of Tom Cage's plight, Penn Cage's attempt to save him, Caitlyn Master's search for the big story, or John Kaiser's quest for the holy grail. This one's all about driving the action forward. And there is a lot of action. And a lot of death. Not all of which you will see coming and much of which is very violent.

When this book came out in 2015, my mom reviewed it here.  She and my dad are big fans of Iles and they both liked this book a lot. As I was reading this book, particularly when I was listening to it, I a couple of things bothered me about it. When I went back and reread my mom's review after finishing the book, I realized that, despite enjoying the book, the same things had bothered her, too. Iles includes a lot of detail in the book, much of which didn't feel necessary. Cutting out that unnecessary detail, and what I felt like was a lot of repetition, would have helped cut down on a very long book (just over 800 pages). Up to a point, I was willing to try to suspend disbelief but Iles pushed things a bit too far for me to do it at the end of the book. My mom also felt the ending of the book stretched credulity.

All that being said, I'm now chomping at the bit for the final book in the trilogy to be released in March. I need to know who will finally survive the blood bath that's been the past week (yep, 1600 pages = 1 week in these two books) and I need to know that the surviving bad guys are going to get theirs. But mostly, I need to know how Penn and Tom will resolve the chasm that has opened between them. Because, damn it, I need to know that something good comes from all of those deaths!

Thanks to the ladies of TLC Book Tours for including me on this tour. For other opinions about The Bone Tree, check out the full tour.

Greg Iles spent most of his youth in Natchez, Mississippi. His first novel, Spandau Phoenix, was the first of thirteen New York Times bestsellers, and his new trilogy continues the story of Penn Cage, protagonist of The Quiet Game, Turning Angel, and #1 New York Times bestseller The Devil’s Punchbowl. Iles’s novels have been made into films and published in more than thirty-five countries. He lives in Natchez with his wife and has two children. Find out more about Greg at his website, follow him on Twitter, and connect with him on Facebook.

Salvage The Bones by Jesmyn Ward

Salvage The Bones by Jesmyn Ward
Published August 2011 by Bloomsbury USA
Source: purchased at my local indie bookstore for this month's book club selection

Winner of the National Book Award 2011

Publisher's Summary:
A hurricane is building over the Gulf of Mexico, threatening the coastal town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, and Esch's father is growing concerned. A hard drinker, largely absent, he doesn't show concern for much else. Esch and her three brothers are stocking food, but there isn't much to save. Lately, Esch can't keep down what food she gets; she's fourteen and pregnant. Her brother Skeetah is sneaking scraps for his prized pitbull's new litter, dying one by one in the dirt. Meanwhile, brothers Randall and Junior try to stake their claim in a family long on child's play and short on parenting.

As the twelve days that make up the novel's framework yield to their dramatic conclusion, this unforgettable family-motherless children sacrificing for one another as they can, protecting and nurturing where love is scarce-pulls itself up to face another day.

My Thoughts:
I live in the suburbs where life is, for the most part, pretty damn easy. We drive reliable cars; we stay warm in the winter and cool in the summer in our homes; we have good jobs, plenty to eat, new clothes when we need them (and, more often, just because we want them), insurance to help protect us from catastrophe. It can be easy to become complacent, to forget that not everyone is as fortunate as we are.

Jesmyn Ward will not allow us to forget and she will not let us turn away.

I cannot stop thinking about the Batiste children. I don't I will stop thinking about them for a long while. About their bond and their love for each other. About Skeetah's love for China, the dog who will fight for him, who will love him unconditionally, who might just be his way to save his family. About Randall and his quiet presence and the way he dealt with the loss of hope. About Junior who wants so desperately to be one of the big kids.

But mostly I will think of Esch, a young, motherless girl who doesn't have anyone to tell her that she is being abused by the boys she allows to have sex with her.

“And it was easier to let him keep on touching me than ask him to stop, easier to let him inside than to push him away, easier than hearing him ask me, "Why not?" It was easier to keep quiet and take it than to give him an answer.”

Seriously, don't you just want to hug her? She is smart enough to be able to relate the myth of Medea to her own life. But she is also naive enough to believe that a boy that won't look at her while he's having sex with her, who lives with another girl, will come to love her as much as she loves him. She desperately tries to hide her pregnancy, as much to protect her brothers as to protect herself. She knows that the boys in her life will fight for her honor much as the dogs they raise fight.

I loved the writing. It is beautiful and cruel and just when you think something terrible will happen, Ward lets you off easy. Until she doesn't. Ward and her family survived Hurricane Katrina, riding it out in their cars after abandoning their home as it filled with water. When she writes about Katrina crashing into Bois Sauvage, it is incredibly tense and real and I could not put the book down in the final 80 pages.

“I will tie the glass and stone with string, hang the shards above my bed, so that they will flash in the dark and tell the story of Katrina, the mother that swept into the Gulf and slaughtered. Her chariot was a storm so great and black the Greeks would say it was harnessed to dragons. She was the murderous mother who cut us to the bone but left us alive, left us naked and bewildered as wrinkled newborn babies, as blind puppies, as sun-starved newly hatched baby snakes. She left us a dark Gulf and salt burned land. She left us to learn to crawl. She left us to salvage. Katrina is the mother we will remember until the next mother with large, merciless hands, committed to blood, comes.”

Salvage The Bones is not an easy read. But if you feel willing to face the world beyond your doorstep, I highly recommend it. Even if you'd prefer not to, I still recommend it.

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Published 1930
Source: I bought my "copy" for my Nook

Summary:
As I Lay Dying is Faulkner's harrowing account of the Bundren family's odyssey across the Mississippi countryside to bury Addie, their wife and mother. Told in turns by each of the family members—including Addie herself—the novel ranges in mood from dark comedy to the deepest pathos.


My Thoughts:
Admission - I read this book by mistake. A couple of months ago, a fellow blogger and I agreed that we would, once again, attempt a readalong, this time of Faulkner. As the first of March rolled around, I found myself busy with books I "had" to read and didn't get started right away. Then, somewhere along the way, I switched the book we'd agreed to read in my brain. By the time I realized my mistake, I was almost a third of the way done with this one and decided to finish it (it was only about 190 pages so I wasn't making a huge commitment).

Faulkner has a reputation for being tough to read. As I Lay Dying is told from the perspective of 15 different narrators. 15. One of them dead. One of them not even present for the parts he is narrating. Several by neighbors who only play a small part in the story but who offer a glimpse into the family. Almost all of them unreliable. So,  yeah. A bit tough to read. Particularly since some if really isn't even meant to make sense; it's simply what is going on in a given character's mind. But it doesn't require a college English professor to explain it to you. Although there is this:

"In a strange room you must empty yourself for sleep. And before you are emptied for sleep, what are you. And when you are emptied for sleep, you are not. And when you are filled with sleep, you never were. I dont* know what I am, I dont know if I am or not. Jewel knows he is, because he does not know that he does not know whether he is or not. He cannot empty himself for sleep because he is not what he is and he is what he is not."

Despite death, arson, a hazardous river crossing, and an arrest, the focus of As I Lay Dying is squarely on Faulkner's characters. In death, Addie Bundren finally wields the power she never had over her family while living, taking her revenge on a family which failed, in her lifetime, to help her overcome her loneliness.

"She lived, a lonely woman, lonely with her pride, trying to make folks believe different, hiding the fact that they just suffered her, because she was not cold in the coffin before they were carting her forty miles away to bury her, flouting the will of God to do it. Refusing to let her lie in the same earth with those Burdens."

The Bundrens do dysfunctional families one better - there is almost no feel of them being a family, more a group of people who were thrown together and by necessity live on together.

According to Faulkner, he wrote the book between midnight and 4 a.m. while working at a power plant and said that he never changed a word of it. Which may explain while sometimes it felt a bit rambly but would also explain while the stream of consciousness style feels so organic. You've got to hand it to Faulkner, given that this book is consistently rated as one of the great books of the twentieth century, when he called this work a "tour de force" it wasn't just vanity. Because there is also this:

"Before us the thick dark current runs. It talks up to us in a murmur become ceaseless and myriad, the yellow surface dimpled monstrously into fading swirls traveling along the surface for an instant, silent, impermanent and profoundly significant, as though just beneath the surface something huge and alive waked for a moment of lazy alertness out of and into light slumber again."

And that is why I so enjoyed this book - Faulkner made me see every thing along the journey, feel his character's pain, understand their motives. Even while I was trying to understand what the heck he was talking about.

*as Faulkner wrote it

A Land More Kind Than Home by Wiley Cash - Plus A Giveaway

A Land More Kind Than Home by Wiley Cash
Published April 2012 by HarperCollins Publishers
Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher and TLC Book Tours in exchange for this review

Publisher's Summary:
For a curious boy like Jess Hall, growing up in Marshall means trouble when you get caught spying on grown-ups. Adventurous and precocious, Jess is protective of his older brother, Christopher, a mute whom everyone calls Stump. Though their mother has warned them not to snoop, Stump can't help sneaking a look at something he's not supposed to—an act that will have repercussions. It's a wrenching event that thrusts Jess into an adulthood for which he's not prepared. He now knows that a new understanding can bring not only danger and evil—but also the possibility of freedom and deliverance.  

Top Ten Reasons Book Clubs Will Want To Read A Land More Kind Than Home


If your book club decides to take Wiley's suggestion, here is a reading guide from HarperCollins. 

My Thoughts:
A Land More Kind Than Home was all the buzz in the book world last year among bloggers. This can be a turn off for me, as I've said before. I find it hard to believe that one book can be so loved by such a wide range of readers. Eventually I find myself reading most of those books and sometimes I do find that those books just don't work for me in the way they worked for everyone else. A Land More Kind Than Home isn't one of those books. It is a book that I found to be more than deserving of all the accolades it earned. It is a lovely, heartwarming book, that reminded me in tone, somewhat, of To Kill A Mockingbird. From the start Cash pulls you into his Southern tale with an intriguing plot and both unusual characters and the very characters you expect to find in this kind of book. He can do that because Cash has a way of making those characters come alive; there is nothing about his characters that felt stereotypical to me.


I found myself surprised by the tension in the book. I suppose that the mention of "danger and evil" in the publisher's summary should have been a clue and the first chapter tells readers that there is going to be trouble. Even so, I was unprepared for it. Perhaps that's what Cash intended. He builds toward a powerful ending throughout the book but pauses long enough throughout to flesh out the background of his characters and ease up a bit on the running plot line. Cash uses multiple first-person narrative to weave the lives of elderly Adelaide Lyle, Jess Hall and his family, fire and brimstone pastor Carson Chambliss, and Sheriff Clem Baresfield together in a way that made me feel deeply for each of them.

Wiley Cash is right - your book club should read this book. There is so much to discuss: love, guilt, justice, redemption, religion, loss. Thanks to TLC Book Tours for including me in this tour; to read more opinions about this book, check out the full tour. To learn more about Wiley Cash, check out his website, like him on Facebook, or find out what he's thinking about by following him on Twitter.

Now for the good news! I have one copy of A Land More Kind Than Home to give away (sorry, U.S. residents only). To enter, just leave a comment below telling me your favorite novel set in the south. I'll announce the winner on Sunday, January 27th.

Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
293 pages
Published January 2010 by Harper Collins, now out in paperback
Source: the publisher and TLC Book Tours

In the mid-19th century there was a resort, Tawawa House, in Ohio where slave owners vacationed with their slave mistresses.  The beautiful cover of this book might lead readers to believe that this was a place where these women lived a life of leisure and pampering, quite different from their lives on the plantation.  Such was not the case.  While there was perhaps slightly more leisure time, these slaves were still expected to keep the cottages they and their masters stayed in clean, still expected to service their masters, and still beaten for any infraction.  Although Ohio was not a slave state, the slaves that journeyed to Tawawa House knew they risks for attempting to escape were nearly as great as if they tried to run away from their plantations.

In Wench, Perkins-Valdez introduces the reader to a group of slaves and their owners who regularly travel to Tawawa House in the summers.  Rennie, the oldest, is also the saddest and the most resigned to her lot in life.  Sir, her owner, is also her half brother, a man who is willing to trade her services for other pleasures.  Sweet is the youngest and pregnant when we first meet her.  Despite her pregnancy, Master does not hesitate to beat Sweet when he sees fit and because of her pregnancy and the four other children she has left on the plantation, she is least likely to make a run.  Lizze, actually loves her owner, Drayle, and believes that he will one day free their children if she just treats him the right way.

When Mawu, a red-headed, freckled slave comes into their midst one summer, she makes them all question their lives and begins to put thoughts into their heads about a different life.  Her owner, Tip, is by far the most vicious of the owners and when he finds out that Mawu is contemplating running away, he viciously beats her in front of the other slaves.  Instead of causing them to give up on their ideas of freedom, it drives the slaves to contemplate just how close they are to freedom and to question just how much they would be willing to give up to have it.

From the moment I first heard about this book, I knew I wanted to read it and the rave reviews it got only made me want to read it more.  By the time I finally did read it, I was concerned that it wouldn't be able to live up to my expectations.  Wench more than met my expectations.  Perkins-Valdez does a remarkable job in her debut of bringing these women to life and of exploring the complicated relationship between slave owners and their mistresses.  Heartbreaking and hopeful at the same time, you can't help but imagine yourself in these women's positions.  Would you be able to give up your children, risk what might happen to anyone you cared about if it meant that you could leave a life of abuse and control?

Thanks to TLC Book Tours for including me in this tour!  For more reviews of this book, see the full list of tour sites. 

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Published 1960
Source: I bought this one for my kids from those flyers the kids bring home

"Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it"

This is the home of Scout Finch, narrator of the story of her youth, her unusual father, Atticus, her older brother, Jem, and the people that surrounded them in the mid-1930's in Alabama.

"People moved slowly then.  they ambled across the square, shuffled in and out of the stores around it, took their time about everything.  A day was twenty-four hours long but it seemed longer.  There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County."

By now, particularly in light of the recent 50th anniversary buzz about this book, you're all probably familiar with the story.   This was the first time I have read this book, although I have seen the movie adaptation several times.  I was both pleased to see how well the book had been adapted (including most of the dialogue) and surprised by how much more there was to discover in the book.

I've always had the impression that Atticus Finch was an ideal father (although this may have something to do with the fact that he's played by Gregory Peck in the movie).  The beginning of the book gave me another impression.

"Jem and I found our father satisfactory; he played with us, read to us, and treated us with courteous detachment."  

Courteous detachment?  Hardly what I would consider a perfect parent.  Atticus is often preoccupied and carries the weight of Maycomb on his shoulders.  Yet he clearly cares deeply about his children and instills in them his deep moral beliefs.

Molly, of The Bumble's Blog, pointed out something to me that I certainly never noticed while watching the movie.  While Scout may be the narrator, and certainly a key player in the book, this is really Jem's coming of age story  The movie adaptation leaves out many events that showed this.  Curiously, it also left out what I thought was one of Scout and Jem's greatest lessons, a lesson Scout learned from her teacher, Miss Gates.  During class one day, Miss Gates is discussing events in Hitler's Germany.  She tells her students:

"Over here we don't believe in persecuting anybody.  Persecution comes from people who are prejudiced."

But Scout knows differently.  Following the trial of Tom Robinson (a black man), Scout recalls hearing Miss Gates say:

"...it's time somebody taught 'em a lesson, they were gettin' way above themselves, an' the next thing they think they can do is marry us."  

This is a beautiful book.  If you've ever started it and put it down because it was so slow paced, give it another try.  Until I was about half way through the book, I was only reading a few pages a day.  I thought it was lovely but it just was not pulling me in.  Then I found that I could not put the book down; I simply wanted to immerse myself in Maycomb.  In the end, I was sad to be done with it and sorry that I will never again have a chance to read this book for the first time.

"Your father's right," she [Miss Maudie] said.  "Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy.  They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts our for us.  That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."

Thanks for convincing me to read this one, Molly!

On Folly Beach by Karen White

On Folly Beach by Karen White
414 pages
Published May 2010 by Penguin Group
Source: TLC Book Tours and the publisher

Emmy Hamilton's husband passed away six months ago and Emmy is having trouble coming to grips with it. When her mother finds out that the store on Folly Beach that the store on which she modeled her own bookstore is for sale, she encourages Emmy to buy it. Paige feels like Emmy needs to try to move on in a place without memories of Ben. But what really sells Emmy is some notes she finds in the margins of some of the books that came to Paige's store from Folly's Find. They seem to hint of a affair from long ago and Emmy is so intrigued that she agrees to buy Folly's Find.

When Emmy gets to Folly Beach, she meets the store's current owner, Abigail Reynolds, daughter-in-law of the woman, Maggie, who owned the store when Paige was growing up in Folly. Emmy also meets Lulu, Maggie's sister, who makes bottle trees in the back of the store and sort of comes in the deal although Emmy's first impression of Lulu makes her want to have nothing to do with Lulu. Heath, Abigail's son, owns the house Emmy is renting while she tries to get settled in Folly. He's got his own issues--the house was built for his fiancee who left him when he found out he had a brain tumor. Emmy finds a lot more of Maggie's old books in the house and begins to search all of them for margin notes, soon piecing together enough clues to make her start asking the family questions. Along the way she also gets to know Abigail's husband, John and her daughter, Lizzie, along with the town regulars as she settles into life in Folly.

In a style reminiscent of The Divine Secrets of the Ya-ya Sisterhood, the reader is privileged to the story of the past in a way that Emmy is not as we travel back on forth in time between Emmy's story and Maggie and Lulu's story, set during World War II. In Maggie's story, we also met Catherine, Maggies's cousin, who's father left the family and mother passed away; Peter, a man from Iowa visiting the island because he's doing business with the nearby naval base; and we learn about Jim, who Maggie and Lulu both loved but who married Cat...and then died at Pearl Harbor a few months later.

Having read the first two books in White's Tradd Street series, I knew going into this book that it would have a light feel and a sense that everything would be alright. Despite the World War II time period of much of the story and the loss of Ben that Emmy is dealing with in the present time, "On Folly Beach" never feels heavy although White does a very good job of conveying the emotions the characters are battling. What I didn't expect going into this one was to like it as much as I did. I had some problems with the idea of Emmy feeling comfortable asking so many really nosy questions of the family and a hard time believing that they would be so willing to share. But all of that was, I suppose, necessary to tell to the story of Maggie, which I really got caught up in. And much of what that story was about tied into the present. Maggie, Lulu, Emmy and even Heath were all dealing with issues of knowing when to left go and move on.

While I don't think that White is going to win any prizes with her writing, she does manage to weave together a lot of different things here which, for the most part, works. Book clubs, would have a lot to discuss. Paige and Emmy's relationship for instance. Paige had a lot of miscarriages which greatly altered her relationship with Emmy. The way people deal with grief--Maggie and Lulu have lost both parents but seem much better equipped to handle their loss than does Catherine, whose mother also died but who spends her life trying to find a man to fill her father's shoes. The role children, or not having children, plays in someone's life...Emmy and Ben opted not to have children until he returned but now she is wishing she had a part of him to hold onto. There were some parts of the book that I found predictable, and some parts that I found hard to buy into, but, overall, I got so wrapped up in solving the mystery of the past, and there were enough surprises, that I was willing to forgive White for any problems I found.

For more information on White and her writings, check out her website.

Thanks to Trish, and TLC Book Tours, for including me on this tour. It will make a great summer read! For other opinions, check out the rest of the tour:
Monday, May 3rd: Rundpinne
Tuesday, May 4th: Downtown Southern
Thursday, May 6th: Life in the Thumb
Friday, May 7th: Café of Dreams
Monday, May 10th: Diary of an Eccentric
Tuesday, May 11th: Peeking Between the Pages
Wednesday, May 12th: Write Meg
Thursday, May 13th: Savvy Verse & Wit
Friday, May 14th: Luxury Reading
Tuesday, May 18th: Red Lady’s Reading Room
Wednesday, May 19th: Books Like Breathing
Thursday, May 20th: Jenn’s Bookshelves
Monday, May 24th: From the Land of Cotton
Tuesday, May 25th: Natalie’s Sentiments
Wednesday, May 26th: A Tale of This Newlywed
Thursday, May 27th: Good Girl Gone Redneck
Friday, May 28th: Flower Patch Farmgirl
Monday, May 31st: Sasha and the Silverfish